Friday, 2 May 2014

Book Review: The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met.

A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

I've
read three of Jennifer E. Smiths previous books (You Are Here, The
Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, and This is What
Happy Looks Like) and I've absolutely loved all of them. So when I
heard about this book, I was ridiculously excited for it. I couldn't
wait for it to come out, and once I got my hands on a copy, I was
excited to read it.

I
was not disappointed. Once again Jennifer E. Smith has created a
story, that you can't help but smile about as you read it.

I'll
admit, I'm not a huge fan if the insta-love kind of thing, but
Jennifer E. Smith just makes it work, and I loved reading about the
instant connection between Owen and Lucy in this book.

I
also loved that it was written in dual perspectives. I even loved
that it was third person, because despite normally being a bigger fan
of first person, I felt that for this story, it worked really nicely
having it done in third.

The
two main characters of this story were great, and I liked that they
had their own back stories and progressing story lines, which were
separate to the love story.

I
loved the travel aspects as well. Dotting about from place to place
and yet always thinking of that one night that they met. It was
fantastically written.

This
book is full of wonderful moments, paced out fantastically and it's
definitely one of the best books I've read this year.